Hope Springs (17 page)

“Off with the both of you.” Mrs. Claire shooed them away with a wave of her hand. “The girls and I will get on famous without you.”

He held the door for Katie. She passed through without a word. Silence was the theme of their walk as the minutes dragged on.

Katie was hurting. He couldn’t ask another favor of her.

After a time, she sighed. “Things have grown difficult, Joseph.”

“Tell me.”

She picked a long blade of wild grass, using it to swipe at the grass growing around her. “I couldn’t help the Irish gather up their missing animals because I had to work. The Irish were disappointed in me for that. And Mr. Johnson is mean as a cat that’s had its tail stepped on.”

He could easily believe that.

“I am growing terribly weary of being called a half-wit simply because I don’t know all the fancy words he uses. I am convinced within myself he does that in order to confuse me. He likes having reason to make me feel stupid.”

“You know that you aren’t, don’t you?”

She rubbed her arms through her shawl and gave a half shrug. “He makes me feel . . . small.”

He pulled off his jacket and set it around her shoulders. She pulled it tight around her. They walked on for a while. Joseph didn’t know quite what to say. He wouldn’t tell her she had no reason to feel the way she did; Johnson was trying to make her feel stupid and unimportant. That was one of Katie’s particularly tender topics, so arguing that she was one of the sharper people he knew would likely seem to her like empty flattery.

“I should start dropping in Gaelic words once in a while when I talk to him. Then
he
would be the one who didn’t know the words being said to him.”

There was the resilient Katie he knew.

“You make a very good point, Katie. He can say all he wants about your intelligence, but he can’t argue with the fact that you speak two languages while he knows only the one.”

“Hmm.” Her steps slowed a bit. After a moment she looked at him again. Her lips turned up a little until she fully smiled. “Now, isn’t that a fine discovery. I know something he doesn’t.”

“Not just
something.
An entire language.”

She laughed. “Maybe that is why he doesn’t want me to use any Irish words, because it makes
him
feel stupid.”

Katie slipped her arms into the jacket sleeves. She looked adorable, so undersized for his coat. And she was smiling again. He’d longed to see that smile every day since she’d left.

She set her fingers in his, though they only just poked out of the jacket sleeve. She had reached for his hand. He adjusted their hands enough to hold hers properly. She didn’t pull back, didn’t object.

He’d been wondering for some time if he ought to try to win her affection. He had debated with himself, arguing that she had chosen Tavish, counterarguing that letting his feelings be known wouldn’t be a bad thing. But that moment, walking alone with her, hand in hand, he knew he couldn’t simply walk away.

“I wish you would come visit more often, Joseph Archer.”

He intended to. But right then, he had particular business to attend to.

“I’ve come for more than a visit,” he confessed. “I’ve come to ask a favor.”

“What is it?”

“I need someone to look after the girls while I’m taking my crop to market. The girls love you and have missed you a great deal since you left. I know they would jump at the opportunity to spend a few days with you again.”

“I’m not qualified to look after children, Joseph. You know what happened to my sister, and you know it was my fault.”

“Katie.” He gave her a stern look. “What I know is that it wasn’t your fault, only that you blame yourself for it. And I further know that you can be trusted despite your misgivings. And I do trust you, enough to have no qualms about leaving the two most precious things in my life to your care—if you are willing to look after them. I have full faith in you, Katie.”

He watched her take a deep breath. She gave a quick nod. “Well, I do speak two languages, you know.”

Joseph squeezed her fingers, smiling at her humor. Her history haunted her, and it pained him to see her still hurting. That she was trying to keep her optimism through it all was commendable. “You plan to end every sentence with that from now on, don’t you? ‘Why, yes, I do make very good sweet rolls, and I speak two languages as well.’”

Katie laughed, swinging their arms between them. “I’ll need to ask Granny Claire if she can keep an eye on the girls while I’m working at the mercantile.”

That difficulty had occurred to him, but true to form, Katie had tackled the problem head-on.

“Emma will be in school many of those days,” Joseph pointed out. “That should relieve some of the burden.”

“Oh, the girls are never burdensome. The children in the first house I worked in were positively demons compared to Ivy and Emma. Demons, Joseph.”

He smiled at her forceful tone. “I am relieved my angels have proven themselves better than their predecessors.”

“Vastly better.”

They turned back in the direction of Mrs. Claire’s house.

“Now are you certain,” she asked, “the Red Road won’t take exception to your girls staying down this road while you’re gone?”

“They will a bit,” he admitted. “But oddly enough, the fact that you work at the mercantile seems to make the Reds find you less threatening.”

Katie looked equal parts annoyed and frustrated. “Probably because they have seen for themselves how firmly I am under Mr. Johnson’s thumb while I’m there. A caged enemy is hardly a dangerous one.”

“I don’t know about that, Katie. Cage any creature long enough and it will fight back.”

Katie shook her head. “Either fight back or curl up and die.”

“Don’t you dare curl up and die.”

His vehemence clearly surprised her. Indeed, it surprised
him.
He tried to cover his outburst with a shrug and a half smile. But there was no explaining away the thread of panic woven into his words at the thought of Katie and all her fire and determination dying under the weight of Hope Springs’ hatred.

“I don’t intend to give up, Joseph Archer. Complain a great deal, certainly—especially when you’re so willing to listen—but I’ll not give my troubles the satisfaction of beating me.”

That’s my Katie.

By the growing look of surprise on Katie’s face, he’d said the words out loud. Her surprise turned to a blush. That was encouraging.

The visit was a quick one. Katie returned Joseph’s jacket, kissed the girls good-bye, and with a smile acknowledged she would see them all in the morning. He would have Katie’s company twice in only a few hours. Joseph could easily grow accustomed to that.

Ivy was still half asleep, but Joseph needed to be on his way and couldn’t wait for a later hour. So he’d arrived at Katie’s door before sunrise, with Ivy heavy in his arms and Emma only slightly more awake beside him.

Katie let them in with her usual command of any task, despite the early hour.

“I’ll just lay this sweet one down on my bed.” She took Ivy out of his arms.

“Thank you.” Though he wanted to bid his tiny girl farewell before he left, he knew Ivy would be impossible the rest of the day if she didn’t get the sleep she needed.

Emma clung to his hand, looking about uncertainly. “Why can’t we sleep in our own house, Papa?”

“Because that would inconvenience Katie. She needs to keep close to Mrs. Claire. And all her baking things are here.”

Emma nodded in understanding, though her brows still turned down with worry.

“You’ll enjoy being with Katie again,” he reminded her. “I would guess she’ll play her violin for you—I know how much you’ve missed that.” They all had.

“Why can’t I go with you, Papa?” Emma looked up at him, a threat of tears in her eyes. “I could help. I am a very hard worker.”

Joseph pulled her up against his side. “You
are
a very hard worker, dear. But you need to be in school.” That argument would likely sting less than a reminder that she was far too small for a trip to the grain markets. “And Katie will need your help with Ivy.”

“I don’t want to be left behind.” That had been Emma’s constant worry for too many years. She wanted to go everywhere he did, needed reassurance that when they were apart, he would return.

“I’ll come back in a little more than a week,” he reminded her. “Sooner, if things go really well. And I’ll bring you back something as I always do. Plus I’ll have our new housekeeper with me, so you won’t be eating burnt toast and runny eggs in a messy kitchen every single day any longer.”

That earned him the tiniest, most fleeting of smiles. “Will she be nice, Papa?”

“The new housekeeper?”

Emma nodded.

“I am sure she will be.”
She had better be.

Katie emerged from the hallway, her arms now empty. The house was quiet with both Ivy and Mrs. Claire sleeping and night not yet entirely fled outside.

Emma’s grip on his hand tightened. “You promise you will come back?”

“I give you my solemn word.” He tried to convey with a look just how sincere he was, but she still looked worried.

Joseph tried very hard not to think ill of his late wife, but at this time each year he found himself cursing her in frustration. She had planted these fears in Emma. She had cruelly taught Emma to expect abandonment.

“I always come back, Emma.”
He
always had.

“But you always leave too. You always leave me here.”

Katie came and stood beside him, standing so close he could smell the flowery scent that had once filled his home while she lived there. He’d missed that about her as well. He’d missed everything.

She motioned him over to the side. Emma stayed where she was, a look of forlorn grief on her face. What was he going to do? He couldn’t break the girl’s heart again.

“Why is she so upset?” Katie asked. “Other than missing you, of course. It seems more than that.”

“She doesn’t want to be left behind.”

“Because she’ll miss you? Or she’ll worry about you?”

He shook his head. “Because her mother left her behind.”

Katie laid her hand gently on his arm. “When she died?”

If only it were that. “No.” He dropped his voice to the smallest of whispers. “Not long after Ivy was born, Vivian decided she’d had enough of Hope Springs and Wyoming and farming, and she ran off with a cowhand from one of the ranches here in the valley.”

“Merciful heavens.”

“It wasn’t a ‘romantic’ connection. She simply wanted to return to Baltimore, and she offered him a small fortune if he would help her get there.” He hadn’t confessed this to anyone but Ian. How was Katie pulling this from him with nothing more than an empathetic look? “She took all her clothes and prized belongings and Ivy, and she left.”

“Wait. She took Ivy?”

Joseph sighed. “Yes. Ivy—and not Emma. Poor Emma didn’t understand the reasons her mother left; she only remembers that she was left behind.”

Katie said something in Gaelic. From the tone and inflection, it was not a flattering reflection on Vivian’s actions.

“My thoughts exactly,” he muttered.

“How could any woman do that to her child?”

“I tracked Vivian down and brought her back, but she died of the fever not long after. There was no time for Emma to feel secure again.”

Katie glanced briefly in Emma’s direction. She pulled Joseph a single step down the hallway.

“I have a suggestion.”

“For Emma?”

“For the both of you.”

“What do you have in mind?” He’d listen to any suggestion Katie had.

They took another step away from Emma—not far enough to cause the girl alarm.

“The poor dear is worried out of all reason that you’re not coming back for her. That is a fear I know all too well.” A flash of pain crossed Katie’s face. “I know what it is to watch my father leave me behind. But he never looked back; he never returned.”

He took her hand. The stories she’d told him of her past returned with force to his mind. She’d known too much heartache in her life.

“The thing that pulled me through those days was having my father’s fiddle,” she said. “’Twas a part of him I had with me to touch and to hold. So long as I had something of his, he didn’t feel completely lost to me.”

Her suggestion became instantly clear. He needed to give Emma something of his to cling to while he was away. “That is a brilliant idea.”

He stepped around her and knelt in front of Emma. He pulled from his jacket his pocket watch. “I need you to look after something for me, Emma. Do you think you could?”

She nodded, some curiosity sneaking into her worried expression. He set the watch in her hand and wrapped her fingers around it.

“I need you to keep this for me, hold on to it until I return.” He gave her a most serious look. “I know you’ll take very good care of it.”

“Oh, I will, Papa.” Her grip on the watch tightened. “I won’t lose it or anything. I’ll still have it when you get back.”

He leaned in very close and whispered, “I will always come back, Emma. Always.”

Emma pressed the watch to her heart. He ran a hand along her still-messy hair.